Bruce Gilchrist
| Bruce Gilchrist | |
|---|---|
| Born | 4 August 1930 Pontefract, Yorkshire |
| Died |
May 23, 2015 (aged 84) Richmond, VA |
| Education | Imperial College of Science and Technology of the University of London |
| Occupation | Mathematician and engineer |
| Employer | Institute for Advanced Study, Syracuse University, IBM, Columbia University |
| Known for | Computer design and programming, calculating methodologies, Meteorology |
| Parent(s) | Charles Gilchrist and Edith Mawson |
Bruce Gilchrist (b. 1930 ) is considered one of the notable figures in modern computing history.
Gilchrist was born 4 August 1930 in Pontefract, Yorkshire, England and attended King Edward VII School in Kings Lynn. He harbored a keen interest in computing and computing devices from an early age.
In October 1948, after being awarded a State Scholarship, he started an accelerated applied mathematics degree course at Imperial College of Science and Technology of the University of London.
In 1951, he be able to attend a two week course at Cambridge University given by Dr. Maurice Wilkes, the developer of the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC). Gilchrist recalls that "this was my first real exposure to computer programming, the problems of debugging, etc.".
In the summer of 1952, he received his doctorate in Meteorology at the University of London. That same year, with a special interest in calculating methods for weather forecasting, and with funding arranged by the mathematician John von Neumann, he joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey supported on United States Smith-Mundt and Fulbright programs. He worked with Dr. Jule Charney, a gifted meteorologist and mathematician, on weather prediction calculations, programming the institute's IAS machine.
He also worked in the area of computers at IAS. Gilchrist first collaborated with the engineer James H. Pomerene on bettering the performance of cathode ray tube memory (the Williams tube developed first at the University of Manchester in England), writing diagnostic programs which allowed the team to make necessary adjustments for speed and reliability.
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